Saturday, September 01, 2012

Grandville Gathering with Clairefontaine & Viva Las Vegastamps!

Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard aka J. J. Grandville, was a French caricaturist in the 1800s, who drew people with fantastical animal heads. He was noted for his biting satire. I love his work. It has an Alice in Wonderland feel (Carroll also included much political satire in his Alice series, that is largely lost on us these days).

I was delighted when I saw that Viva Las Vegastamps! had included four Grandville images among their latest stamps! Immediately, I knew I wanted to do a sort of Wind in the Willows picture, with a Gathering of Grandville figures.

Stamp Pads: Ranger Archival Black, Versamark Watermark

Process

I tore out a page from the back off my Clairefontaine journal and stamped the Grandville images. I colored them with the colored pencils, cut them out with the exacto knife and put them in an envelope for later.

I had a pretty specific look in mind, but needed some reference, so I used two photos from my brother's North Carolina farm as a rough guide.

I drew and colored in my picture with the distress markers, using a water brush to lighten the colors toward the back. I left a white border on both sides and the top, but colored all the way to the edge on the bottom and right-hand corner side, to give the picture more of a 3D feel.

After tapping the Versamark Watermark pad along the right bottom corner, roughly in the shape of the rocks, I sprinkled copper embossing powder and heated it until it was flowing. I let it cool and repeated using silver embossing powder this time. I repeated 5 times alternating the colors, and varying the amount of heat, to get bubbles and even slight scorching in some areas.

I repeated the embossing process on the left bottom corner. After the heated powder was dry I used a black Sharpie to add shadows.

Next I tapped the Versamark ink onto my Cracked background stamp and stamped along the edges of the water and up over the embossed rocks. I sprinkled Snow White Embossing powder, tapped off the excess and heated. I repeated this with the multi-leaf branch in a couple of spots to get the effect of wider frothing.

Again I used a black Sharpie to add shadows.

For the leaves in the upper corners, I used the Leaf Trio and Leaf Background and the gold embossing powder, adding shadows with the Sharpie.

Then I pulled out my stamped images and stuck foam tape to the back and attached my Grandville characters. I hope they're hardy fellows because they're awfully close to the water!